117. General strike

In 2019 in Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island territory of the United States, tensions were rising between the citizens and their governor Ricardo Rosselló Nevares. When news outlets leaked hundreds of pages of profane online chat messages between Rosselló and eleven of his close advisors, Puerto Rican citizens began protesting for his resignation by the hundreds of thousands. After two weeks of protests, Rosselló agreed to step down, and Secretary Wanda Vázquez assumed the role of Governor of Puerto Rico. 

In 2003, the National Women’s Conference (ENM), a yearly feminist conference based in Argentina, held a workshop called “Strategies for Abortion Rights” in the nation’s province of Rosario. This workshop inspired the idea for launching a national campaign focused on the right to choose. In May of the following year, feminist groups organized another conference at the University of Buenos Aires to implement proposals from the 2003 ENM.

After long negotiations, twelve countries from around the Pacific Rim came together to endorse the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The partnership would have been the largest regional trade accord in history, including countries that make up 40% of the global gross domestic product. The United States, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Peru, and Chile were involved in this trade negotiation, which was seen as a collective defense against China’s economic, political and legal influence in the Pacific Rim.

From 30 March 2018 to 26 December 2019, Gazans protested at the Israeli border every Friday for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land that they had been displaced from since 1948. This series of demonstrations is known now as the “Great March of Return.”

Alexander Lukashenko first assumed office as the president of Belarus in 1994. In the years to follow, he consolidated his power through increasingly authoritarian rule. Although the government held presidential elections to re-appoint Lukashenko for each subsequent term, according to third-party analysts and the international community, the process was fraudulent and provided no genuine opportunity for opposition. It was not until the August 2020 presidential election that Belarusians voiced opposition on a massive, organized scale.

During the first decades of the 20th century, Spain saw the rise of several radical left and right groups that continually vied for power against the largely ineffectual civilian government.
On the left the groups included the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and its more radical rival the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT).

Belize formally became an independent nation in 1981 and quickly established itself as a parliamentary democracy with a high degree of electoral participation and a Constitution that guaranteed basic rights and freedoms to all citizens. In 1998, the People's United Party won a landslide victory and party leader Said Musa was sworn in as Prime Minister - a position he held until 2008.

The general strike of 1913 was organized by the Socialist Party of Belgium as the last desperate measure to make the Government create a system of universal manhood suffrage rather than the system of plural voting which was practiced at the time. 

The exasperation of the Liberal and Socialist Opposition had increased significantly after the elections of June 2

In 1940, at the brink of World War II, Denmark found itself declaring neutrality and cutting its troops in half. Despite this, the German war machine was not to be stopped. The German army invaded Denmark offering an ultimatum demanding submission. To minimize Danish casualties at the hand of a superior German army, the Danish King Christian submitted. Although it was occupied by German troops, Denmark had not surrendered and remained a sovereign state.

Following the 1933 general strike, which resulted in the overthrow of President Machado, Ramon Grau San Martin was made the head of the Cuban government. His administration was given legitimacy because of support by DEU minister of government Antonio Guiteras and chief of the army Fulgencio Batista. On January 15

In May of 1940, the Netherlands was occupied by the Nazi war machine. At that time, the Netherlands had a total area of 33,000 square kilometers, and only approximately nine million people living there. The country was also relatively flat, with little natural features that could contribute to an armed resistance against the Nazis. The Netherlands had a policy of neutrality and had no recent experience with outside invading forces. In addition, Queen Wilhelmina and the Dutch royal family refused to accept the Nazi offer for protection under the Reich and instead fled to London.

Through several decades in the 20

Guadeloupe is generally a tourist-friendly French Caribbean island (a department of the French state, whose residents are citizens of the EU). The island's inhabitants rely mostly on imported goods sold in French-owned supermarkets at a significantly higher price than on the mainland, despite having a 23 percent rate of unemployment, more than twice that of France's.

The May revolt started as a student protest over the closing of the University of Paris’ Nanterre campus. The campus closed after months of escalation of student protests. These protests initially stemmed from a fight for sexual liberation (or the right to have visitors of the opposite sex in dorms) that later radicalized to become a fight for more student influence in the education system, and finally for a complete change of economic and social structure.

For much of the nineteenth century, Finland was under Russian rule. This began in 1809 when Finland was made part of the Russian Empire. As part of the Russian Empire, Finland was autonomous in domestic policy but not foreign policy. Finland was allowed to create its own laws through its parliament, but Russian tsars controlled Finland and decided Finnish foreign affairs. Finns generally had no problem with this situation because the Russian government did not interfere with internal affairs.

During the 1950s, Honduras was characterized by a large gap between the few rich citizens and the many poor laborers. In 1952, Honduras held its first ever agrarian census. The wealthy landowners, who only consisted of 4.2 percent of the total population, owned an astonishing 56.8 percent of the arable land in Honduras. Meanwhile, the poor farmers of Honduras, who made up 65.1 percent of the population, only owned 15.7 percent of the arable land. To make matters worse, the wealthy landowners who possessed the majority of the land did not use it effectively.

The Haitian President, Elie Lescot had been granted the powers of a dictator by his congress and was backed by the United States.  He was representative of the mulatto ruling class during a time when black political radicalism was growing in Haiti.  Lescot was also closely tied with the Dominican Dictator Rafael Trujillo.  The Haitian student journal, Zinglins, had criticized President Lescot’s dictatorship and begun a call for freedom of press even as early as May 1945.  The government quickly suppressed this opposition voice.  However, the editors of another stude

From the late 19th century into the early 20th century, Ecuador’s labor movement was slowly growing. However, most workers’ organizations consisted of groups of artisans, rather than industrial workers. These mutual aid societies collected dues mainly to pay for funerals of members who passed away and to financially help the family of the deceased. Additionally, some started night schools and reading groups. They also received most of their funding from the government, which helped keep their actions and goals moderate.

Beginning in 1931 Jorge Ubico ruled Guatemala with an iron fist with the help of the vicious secret police. He admired Hitler’s tactics. By the summer of 1944, a similarly brutal dictator, Maximiliano Hernández Martínez, was overthrown in the face of a widespread nonviolent campaign in nearby El Salvador. This campaign served as a template for Guatemala’s own movement.

The political atmosphere in Japan in the 1950s was anything but calm. Still reeling from the Second World War, citizens were coming to terms with their newly democratic leaders—politicians who, before the war, had been ardently fascist. A growing nationalist movement was forming, as well as strong leftist political factions. These two movements opposed Japan’s strong ties with the United States, and disagreed with the American military presence in their country.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the political atmosphere in Kenya was characterized by brutal government repression and terror.  Under the single-party rule of President Daniel arap Moi, any form of political dissension was swiftly met with government interrogation, detention, and torture.  Many students, journalists, lawyers, and human rights advocates were among those imprisoned for perceived anti-government statements, ideas, and actions.

In Martinique, a small Caribbean island and overseas department of France, 70,000 people live below the poverty line. Before this campaign, the people of Martinique had been experiencing a continuing increase in layoffs and precariousness in work while the purchasing power continued to decrease. Unemployment was at 23 percent, while most of the basic food items shipped in from France remained very expensive.

In the 1940s, Nazi Germany under the government of Adolf Hitler was advancing its conquest of Europe during the Second World War. By May 1940, Luxembourg, a small neutral country bordering Germany, was placed under military occupation by forces of the Third Reich. The meager resistance made by local police forces and customs officers at the border crossing was quickly crushed by the German Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.

In 1971 South-West Africa (now Namibia) had been under the rule of South Africa’s apartheid government for more than fifty years. Apartheid laws forced indigenous Namibian tribes to live in assigned tribal areas in the northern third of the country and required passes for movement within the country. The Ovambos were the main group of indigenous people, making up close to half the population, and inhabited the area called Ovamboland. The South African government had imposed a contract labor law system on all indigenous people.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Regarding the First Intifada as "nonviolent" is controversial because of the violence that accompanied the campaign. Aden Tedla's narrative does not try to hide the violent dimension. Three considerations lead us to include the case in this database. First, a significant part of the campaign leadership worked very hard to keep the campaign nonviolent. Second, the masses participated in the nonviolent methods, not in the violence. Third, other scholars in the field of nonviolent action include the Intifada, although acknowledging its ambiguities.